The fact that the parking lot of the World Tea & Coffee, Inc. is located eleven stores from it still implies that it is their parking, private property. The non-employee union organizers have the right to reach employees of any organization and lure them to join their union (Flanagan, 1986). This implies that both the employer and the union have rights, which conflict one another.
There are labor laws and legal cases concerning the non-employee union organizations in parking lots that are private. A company’s policy prohibiting the distribution of the handbills by the union organizers is unfair in its implementation. This is because a company’s employees have a guaranteed right to associate and join unions, and even create them. However, the company has a right to prohibit the distribution of the handbills o its parking lot.
The facts in the case involving the World Tea & Coffee Inc. and the AFL-CIO union are that: the union has a right to lure the employees into the union so long as they are willing. As such, the company has the right to prohibit distribution of the handbills to its employees via its private parking lot, and the employees of the company have the right to be in an organization or union willingly.
The issue in the case is: is it right for the non-employee union to distribute handbills to employees of the company in the company’s parking lot without obtaining the necessary permissions from the company? The rules are that: the company is allowed to prohibit any non-employee union organizers from invading their private property, according to Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) (Flanagan, 1986). The unions are also allowed by the law to reach employees to join unions. The application of the rule to the issue is that: an employer, by law, cannot be compelled to allow a non-employee union into their property. The employees cannot be coerced to join the union, and the newspaper advertisement was enough to inform them. The methods used by the union to lure the employees could best apply in a situation where the employees reside in the company; in this case, they don’t. The employees have a right to belong to any union, only after they decide to be in it by learning the advantages and disadvantages (Mendelson, 2014). The union was aiming at providing this knowledge to them by placing handbills on their cars’ windshields.
The non-employee union did not have to distribute their leaflets to employees against the company’s will and at its private parking lot. It should have devised other ways of doing so. The storeowner has the right to prohibit the non-employee unions in distributing their literature against its will.
- Flanagan, R.J. (1986). NLRA Litigation and Union Representation. Stanford Law Review, 38(4), 957.
- Mendelson, L. (2014). Littler Mendelson on employment law class actions. Lexis Nexis
